Friday, June 05, 2015

LHC at 13 TeV - Where Are The Crackpots Now?

I taunted the doomsday crackpots when the LHC hit 8 TeV a while back, and I'm going to taunt then again now. So where are these jokers hiding and what are their excuses for our world still had not been swallowed up by a gigantic blackhole created by the high-energy collisions?

Now granted that the last thing I want to do is hear any more nonsensical ramblings from these folks. They've take up too much oxygen already in their lifetimes. But still, I sometime wish I can come across one of them, and really, REALLY, ask them if they think that they have a huge egg on their faces. There is just not enough follow-up on things like this, and I often wonder if these people actually learned something from their silliness, or if they are still delusional and stubborn about it.

At some level, the same can be said about all those preprints and theories that came out when OPERA reported faster-than-light neutrinos. I sometime wish I could talk to these people, who I don't consider to be crackpots, but who should know better than to jump the gun. I always wanted to know why they publish their theories THAT quickly to jump on the bandwagon. Is it the idea of wanting to be the first? Is it the concept of throwing out as many darts as one can and hope that one will stick? How do they feel now that they somehow came up with a theory based on a non-existing evidence?